Matthew Yglesias Wants to Boycott

Why? Because of this:

Megan Stack's recounting of her life in Saudi Arabia is a reminder that for all the ink that's been wasted on bringing liberalism to the Muslim world by bombing Muslim country or yelling really loudly at Iran, there are much more obvious things that could be done:

The rules are different here. The same U.S. government that heightened public outrage against the Taliban by decrying the mistreatment of Afghan women prizes the oil-slicked Saudi friendship and even offers wan praise for Saudi elections in which women are banned from voting. All U.S. fast-food franchises operating here, not just Starbucks, make women stand in separate lines. U.S.-owned hotels don't let women check in without a letter from a company vouching for her ability to pay; women checking into hotels alone have long been regarded as prostitutes.

People could organize a boycott in the US and Europe against Western fast food franchises that enforce this kind of gender apartheid abroad. The Saudi market's not that big, in the scheme of things, it would be relatively easy to put companies in a position where it's not financially worth it for them to keep operating Saudi franchises under those conditions. Maybe the Saudi regime would let them operate differently. Maybe they'd agree to pay the price of isolation and activists would need to move on to the next economic sector. It does, however, seem to me that the Saudi elite prizes maintaining some degree of integration with the cultural and commercial mainstream and wouldn't want to see Western brands all withdraw from their country.

Obviously, this is silly and impractical for all sorts of reasons. Firstly, most Americans couldn't care less that Saudi Arabian women have to stand in a different line at a McDonalds, so it will be difficult to organize any sort of meaningful boycott protest. So the potential domestic economic damage for American fast food companies would be slight, if not negligible, so the incentive to give up foreign economic gain would also be slight.

Secondly, this social problem in Saudi Arabia isn't a product of McDonalds' segregated wait lines. That is a symptom of a much, much bigger disease, and forcing American corporations out won't fix anything. But it could increase further animosity between the United States and the Muslim world, who are just a bit sensitive to American intervention into their social structures. That we don't need.

Thomas Friedman has a lot of faults, but recognizing that each country will assimilate the Lexus/Olive tree dichotomy in their own way isn't one of them. Forcing every country to accept some sort of American construct as a prerequisite for us doing business with them is not only impossible, it's counter-productive. That's not to say that we shouldn't encourage greater rights for women in the Mid-East. Of course we should. But the way to do that isn't to force McDonalds to leave the region.